Never, ever build a nuclear plant.

[gus_smedstad]

I just had my first meltdown today, and it was the most annoying thing I've ever run into. The city lost several vital improvements like the factory and 4 adjacent squares lost towns. Since I was shooting for my first-ever Cultural victory (on Monarch) and the city that melted down was the most critical Cultural city, the one with the lowest per-turn culture generation. Per-turn culture generation dropped from 650 to 350. In effect, a single die roll lost me the game.

I almost never build nuclear plants since usually I conquer enough territory to be assured of coal, but in this game I'd started on my own island and thought I'd try playing peacefully for a change. I had uranium, but not coal.

I thought if I had a meltdown, at worst I'd have to clean up some pollution, ala Civ 1-3. Little did I know I'd lose several city improvements, and just as importantly town tile improvements which would take at least 35 turns to rebuild.

The drawbacks of a failed die roll are so severe that it's just not worth the extra +50% production under any circumstances unless you already have Fusion.

- Gus

[MattPilot]

Nuclear powerplants don't give extra production. All they do is provide power, which in turn provides extra production, but no more than coal or hydro.


The benefit of running nuclear is no health problems (-2 health).


That for me was no good reason to even consider nuclear plants. So i modded it that coal plants give -4 health and nuclear powerplants also provide +1 free specialists.

Now its something i'd consider, but definitely not in every city.

[gus_smedstad]

Yes, I knew that nuclear plants are just a low-pollution substitute for coal plants. By "+50% production" I meant the power bonus.

I generally don't build nuclear plants because they require an extra technology (fission) that's usually a low priority for me, and often the health hit isn't important. Ignoring the technology and meltdown issues, nuclear plants cost the same as an aquaduct (100 hammers, +2 health) and a coal plant (150 hammers, -2 health), which isn't bad if health is an issue. Considering that they require Uranium, a strategic resource, and cost 50 hammers more than hydro plants, they're probably well enough balanced without the meltdown problem.

My point was that the meltdown when it does occur is so extreme that it outweighs any benefits the plant provides. Given what I know now, I'd wouldn't build one even if they were free.

- Gus

[Quillan]

I use them, but only rarely. Most of the time I make a priority out of Three Gorges, saving a Great Engineer just to rush it. On the occasions when I get beat to it, I use hydro plants where I can. I think you just got unlucky with the meltdown, but I don't know what the chances are.

[gus_smedstad]

I'm not as fond of the 3 Gorges Dam as I was of the Hoover Dam in earlier games, because it's expensive and the technology comes much later than coal plants. At a minimum it's Industrialization + Plastics. Often it's a lot more, if you've avoided Scientific Method, or if you are at war an want Radio + Flight for bombers.

It costs as much as 11 coal plants, so it's not much of a bargain if you have only 4-5 cities with production over 18 hammers. Even hurried by a Great Engineer, it's usually as expensive as 5 coal plants. Certainly sometimes the 3 Gorges Dam is worthwhile, it's just not always worthwhile as the corresponding Wonder was in earlier games.

In this particular game, I had no intention of researching Plastics at all. To win a Cultural victory you have to sacrifice research in the late game to get the 2nd and 3rd cities up to 50,000 culture. Even with nothing left to build, Seville only generated 242 culture a turn at 0% culture. At 90% culture, it generated 650 culture a turn (due to +450% in culture bonuses), which reduced the time to 50,000 culture from 138 turns to 50. Since there were only 140 turns left in the game, I really had to forgo research at that point.

Certainly there's no way to know how likely a meltdown is, and possibly the chance is low. My point is that no matter how low the chance is, the results reduced my game to a spin of the roulette wheel. When it came up 00, I lost the game. If I'd been shooting for a space victory or conquest, it wouldn't have been as bad. Even so, it introduces a large luck factor into the game that's unwelcome, no matter how low the odds are.

- Gus

[MattPilot]

I guess you could of rush-built all culture improvements, no? Shouldn't of taken you more than 10 turns to get it back to its original 'glory' - of course at a great price

[khearn]

You can't rush-build a town. If he was relying on the culture created by having 4 towns going 100% to culture, there's no way to replace that quickly.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by Quillan
I use them, but only rarely. Most of the time I make a priority out of Three Gorges, saving a Great Engineer just to rush it. On the occasions when I get beat to it, I use hydro plants where I can. I think you just got unlucky with the meltdown, but I don't know what the chances are.

No, I found out the hard way too in one of my earlier games. I thought when the documentation said "small chance of melt down", that it meant a very small chance, but that wasn't teh case. I built them everywhere I didn't have a river in one game and had two melt downs in two of my top 5 cities. I'll only build one now as a last resort.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by khearn
You can't rush-build a town. If he was relying on the culture created by having 4 towns going 100% to culture, there's no way to replace that quickly.

Right, that's 7 x 4 x 450% = 126 culture / turn right there. That, and culture buildings double in value after they're aged a certain number of years, so replacing the destroyed Library for example will only generate half the original culture.

I ended up reloading an autosave and using my workers to destroy the Uranium mine. I consider reloading a saved game to be cheating normally, but this was an exception. At least now I can say I've won a Cultural victory at least once, though the score was quite a bit less than I'm accustomed to.

- Gus

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by gus_smedstad
Right, that's 7 x 4 x 450% = 126 culture / turn right there.

How did you get 450%?

[gus_smedstad]

+100% for Free Speech.
+200% for cathedrals for Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Islam.
+50% for a broadcast tower.
+50% for Broadway.
+50% for Hollywood.

That was my 3rd-best cultural producer. In my 2nd best, I substituted the Hermitage for Broadway and Hollywood. My highest cultural city only had +400% (it contained Rock and Roll) but had early wonders like The Oracle and the Great Library.

- Gus

[Strategist83]

Look at it from the bright side: Now your units will glow in the dark!

[fuch1142]

I have an ideal!


Why Iran insist to reopen the nuclear project?

The waste from a nuclear power plant can be used to extract Pu-239 or something else.

Pu-239 is the material to make the "bomb".

Maybe there will be a mod raising the threshold of greenhouse effect, and the city with a nuclear power plant boosting 100% nuke production rate.


"We are backed up with nuclear weapon!"

[MattPilot]

how about having a nuke power plant as a requirement to building nukes in that city?

So if you want your to be backed by nuclear weapons, ya need to live with the risk.

[hallumj]

Yeah, last game I was racing to win the space race before the end of the game, and I got caught by a meltdown (in a marathon game), in the part that was closest to the wire. It pretty much nuked the production capabilities of the city, as well. It was all over.